3| Cybersecurity and DevOps Expert, Michael Fraser
Preparando audio para descarga.
Escucha patrocinada. El audio empezará en pocos segundos...
Escucha sin anuncios y sin esperas con iVoox Premium
Pruébalo GratisiVoox Podcast & Radio
Comparte éste audio
Enlace directo
A continuación: 4| Marine One Corpsman to Design Expert, Chileen DuRaine-Duncan Cancelar 10
Preparando audio para descarga.
Escucha patrocinada. El audio empezará en pocos segundos...
Escucha sin anuncios y sin esperas con iVoox Premium
Pruébalo Gratis
Michael Fraser is currently Co-Founder/CEO/Chief Architect at Refactr, Inc, a firm he co-founded in 2017. At Refactr, he is building a disruptive cloud software company that believes that all MSPs and MSSPs should be able to visually design, deploy and manage secure multi-cloud IT solutions they can share across their organization through cloud + security orchestration and automation. Starting his career in the United States Air Force in cybersecurity, Michael left after 9 years to start multiple technology startups in the cloud services and cybersecurity space. Michael has published many feature articles including in Redmond Channel Partners, featured on the cover of Channel Pro Magazine and has presented at numerous industry events, including: CRN, ChannelPro, Microsoft and RedHat Ansible. We talk about his expertise in loading missles onto fighter jets, conducting cybersecurity operations in NBC gear, surviving hurricanes, startup challenges, and his hot startup Refactr. Show Notes refactr | playbook.cloud
Follow Michael on social media:
LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook
Theme music by: Ruel Morales
Audio Transcript Brian Schoenborn 0:01
Hey, everybody. Our guest today is a cyber security expert, right? Kind of responsible for stopping people like Paige Thompson with the recent Capital One breach, and other things like that. Got his start in the Air Force doing that, and he’s recently started a new entrepreneurial venture. Give it up for my friend Mike Fraser. My name is Brian Schoenborn. I’m an explorer of people, places and culture. In my travels, spending over 20 countries across four continents, I’ve had the pleasure of engaging in authentic conversations with amazingly interesting people. These are their stories, on-location and unfiltered. Presented by 8B Media, this is Half the City.
So yeah, how’s it going?
Mike Fraser 0:55
Yeah. Spoken like a true cyber security expert.
Spoken like a true software engineer.
Brian Schoenborn 1:02
There we go. Um, so I want to dive right in like, I want to start with where you came from right before you get to the before you get to your current business things. Air Force
Mike Fraser 1:14
That’s the only branch.
Brian Schoenborn 1:19
All right. Spoken like a true Air Force guy. I don’t even know what to call you guys.
Mike Fraser 1:26
The civilian branch. The chair force.
Brian Schoenborn 1:30
The chair force! There we go. I like it.
Mike Fraser 1:32
Many, many names I’ve been called by other branches.
That’s all right, I get them too. Our friend Chileen was calling me a crayon eater the other day. That was fun.
That’s awesome.
Brian Schoenborn 1:46
Yeah. So I want to hear it. I want to hear some stories about your time in the Air Force doing cyber security and stuff like that. Kind of some of the stuff you did you know any crazy shit that happened. That kind of stuff.
Mike Fraser 2:00
Yeah, well, there’s so much we want to have time to cover here. But I think, you know, from my perspective, I started out working on, I was actually supposed to go work on B-2 bombers. But I changed…They changed me over because I need to people on F-15, Cs and Ds, and right before I went to, or why when I got to tech school. So I ended up getting a top secret clearance even though I would end up working on F-15, C and D models, which was a pretty interesting experience.
Brian Schoenborn 2:36
So yeah, so what are you doing on like when you know cyber security on F-15s? Like,
Mike Fraser 2:40
No, no. So this is not cyber security. This is working on weapons systems.
Brian Schoenborn 2:45
Oh, awesome.
Mike Fraser 2:47
So yeah. So weapons, so in cyber security you have weapons too, but these are actual weapons that will kill people.
Brian Schoenborn 2:55
Like these are physically dangerous weapons.
Mike Fraser 2:57
And our motto is we kill people and blow shit up, so.
It’s pretty straightforward and to the point.
Very. That’s weapons. So, yeah, so I was weapons. I went through tech school and I was a, what they call a rope. So I was one of the leaders in tech school. So I end up marching people back and forth. I…
Brian Schoenborn 3:23
Oh, cool, doing cadence.
Damn, dude. That’s that’s buck, man.
Mike Fraser 3:24
Made sure people went to PE. And if they weren’t there, I’d go drag them out by there hair…I guess not really their hair, but more of their, whatever they’re wearing or whatever they’re not but I uh…and that’s actually where I started my first kind of entrepreneurship as an adult, so I was…got to tech school, I was 19. And I actually I got to tech school right before I was 19. I was 18 turning 19 and I started just trying to figure out because I had an affinity for computer repair stuff. So stuff like that when I was a teenager. And I got into talking with the chaplains and they all needed computer work. So I was like, “Okay 75 bucks an hour I’ll work on your stuff” and markup on all the stuff that I was selling them because they either go to the local computer repair shop or they could help an airman out.
Yeah, so that was it was cool because, out of it, I ended up getting…I never actually obviously didn’t do anything with those but I got recommendations to ROTC, recommendations the academy. So I was trying to line up things to like all right, you know, if I’m interacting with these, it’s al l chaplains are officers. If I want to go that route, this is the time to do it. Yeah, I got all that stuff put together. But then I started really kind of enjoying being an entrepreneur. And so after I got out of tech school and got to my first base, that was at Sheppard Air Force Base and in the shithole of Texas also called the panhandle. So just about an hour north of Dallas, an hour south of Oklahoma, and an hour not an hour far enough from being one of the shitiest places to live in the United States. But I made the best of it so I was able to kind of start building out my entrepreneurial spirit by doing stuff for chaplains on base and some other fellow airmans too. I built some computers there but when I got to my first base started actually building computers out of my doors. I was the guy building computers out of his dorm room. I set up a wireless network in my dorm and charged other airmen in the dorm, and airwomen a monthly fee. So I had I had DSL coming into my…
Brian Schoenborn 4:59
…you’re like the first Cox or first charter.
Mike Fraser 5:51
I had, I had DSL coming into my, my dorm, and so I got a couple of high decibel gain antennas and mounted them in my window. And then I would serve it up to the two other dormitories that were adjacent to us.
Brian Schoenborn 6:08
So you’re hitting up everybody.
So yeah, making money off that. And then I had, I was doing computer repair or I actually built computers from people from scratch. So everybody I was working with, so I ended up, so I was working in aircraft armament. But I mastered that and like, as soon as I got to the base, which was a super easy job. But I was doing what we call load crew of the quarter.
So what’s that?
Mike Fraser 6:33
So essentially you go and get every month you have to go get certified as going and loading up in our case on the F-15 Aim-9Xs, and Aim-120s, so different various missiles. So we would go and they would time us and we would go around and we couldn’t get any safety, you can have any safety violations so you have to do everything properly. You mount the missiles, you’d have a jammer. So I was a jammer driver, you drive the jammer up to the the aircraft, you’d get it up. Or you get the the missile up to the pylons wherever you’re mounting it to, to essentially engage it into the aircraft. And then you have to put in we call, they’re called explosive cartridges, or they’re called Cars, we call them cars for short, but they’re essentially these little cylinders that have pellets in them. And what happens is, there’s an electrical charge that hits them, and when it does, it creates a gas in the chamber and expands and then launches the missile off of the aircraft. So we’d have to insert those. So when we did our whole thing, we’d have to mount the missile, put in the cartridges, get everything hooked up. If it’s a Aim-9X we’d have to put in essentially argon gas, so there’s a lot of steps you have to do. Anyway.
Brian Schoenborn 7:53
So is there like a like a everyday person’s term for that missle? Like, because it’s like I think when I when I think missiles I think of like, I don’t know, I think Patriot missiles and like Scuds. Because I don’t know anything about…
Mike Fraser 8:07
Yeah those are ground, so we were so are the missile we were using were air to air, so they were like one aircraft to an other ones you’re talking about are ground to air like Scud missile are ground to air so you’re trying to take out aircraft on F-15, specifically on the C’s and D’s they are air to air. The F-15E also has the ability to do bombs so you can drop them. That was another, we called AMU, but essentially another unit in our wing that were F-15s as well. So we’d have F-15s, we had so the Cs and Ds, the F-15Es, A-10s. We also had F-22s just coming in and right before I got out of active duty, we were just bringing the F-35s.
Brian Schoenborn 8:08
So what’s the F-35?
Mike Fraser 8:34
As far as I know, it’s the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter but it’s also the most expensive aircraft ever built and still not fully into production. They’ve been spending a lot of money on that. I got out active duty 15 years ago, so they’re still…
Brian Schoenborn 9:16
Really? I’ve been out for about 18, so I got a little more salt…
Mike Fraser 9:20
…but I had a bunch of years in the garden too. So yeah.
Brian Schoenborn 9:22
Nice.
Mike Fraser 9:24
So I so so back to this, we did air, so we, we did monthly load crew. So I was there for, I want to say a handful months, and I was on a crew that we ended up getting load crew of the quarter, the first quarter. Then they asked, “Anybody want to volunteer for honor guard?” So I was like, “Hell yeah, I want to volunteer for honor guard. It’s something else that I could do.” So volunteer for honor guard got into that. And so I was on honor guard for almost a year.
Brian Schoenborn 9:52
So what does honor guard entail for the listeners?
Mike Fraser 9:55
So we do. So we did all kinds of things that you would think of a…you see military members that are ,so like at ballgames, you see them coming on posting the colors, the flags.
Brian Schoenborn 10:04
Oh, cool.
Mike Fraser 10:05
We would do funerals. So anybody that was going to have a military funeral, we would go to that. And then we would we would go to events so we’d be like, so this is in Vegas, at Nellis.
Brian Schoenborn 10:17
That must have been sweet.
Mike Fraser 10:17
We would do boxng matches, all kinds of cool stuff. But then on the flip side of that we had to do funerals, so that was kind of…the worst one was there was a, I say worse, we were obviously respecting our military veterans, right. It’s something that I really appreciate that we were doing.
Brian Schoenborn 10:36
Yep.
Mike Fraser 10:36
But we had one that the guy was morbidly obese and so we had to have like eight of us carrying this thing. We’re all like, trying to hold position…
Brian Schoenborn 10:47
…and and you’re all Air Force dudes, which you guys don’t do anything but like sit in a gym anyways.
You got like a forklift or something? I don’t know.
Mike Fraser 10:51
Yeah, we just sit in the gym. Yeah, we should have just had one of the robots we built come out and lift it for us. I don’t know what we were thinking.
Yeah, one of the drones coulda flown it in.
Brian Schoenborn 11:06
Exactly. Flown in the body.
Mike Fraser 11:10
So we so we did that. That was that was interesting. Very interesting. You could tell who’s the strong people who who weren’t. And then we ended up so I did a bunch of Fourth of July parades. So remember this in Vegas.
Brian Schoenborn 11:24
Yeah.
Mike Fraser 11:25
And then we had to go to Arizona as well. I think I did four or five parades. And in Vegas, and we did one parade in northern Arizona. And it was like hell on earth. I mean, we’re in our full blues your dress blues?
Brian Schoenborn 11:38
Middle of July, early July, sorry. So yeah. I mean, I lived in Vegas for three years.
Mike Fraser 11:43
Yeah so you get it.
Brian Schoenborn 11:44
Yeah, I know, man. Like it’s, I remember like, I was there for three years. And I think like six months out of the year, it’s triple digits. And I remember about one day a year it’d hit a buck-20 and you know, I’ve never been to the Middle East or you know, so I don’t know, like, that temperatures like but 120 is fucking hot dude. I don’t care, like people are like, “Oh, it’s dry heat.”
Mike Fraser 12:05
So it’s hot when you’re doing what, so we were doing honor guard. But it was also equally hot when I was working on the flightline. So you imagine the F-15s testing the the engines out and you’re just out there and if there’s blasting, and it’s just like, and you come in, and you have just sweat drenched. And the worst part is when you’re doing like, so we had to do that same load crew or load certification in the summertime too, in NBC gear. So we’d have the gas mask on. the coal, charcoal outfit on, the gloves and everything and having to go load the munitions in that. But the cool thing is, I didn’t win one load through the quarter. I didn’t want two load crews of the quarter. I didn’t when I went three load crews of the quarter. I went up for load crew of the year.
Brian Schoenborn 12:48
You sound like LeBron and Dwyane Wade right now.
Mike Fraser 12:52
If there was something for load crew people, but yeah, we’re gonna…I have stacks of plaques from all the load crew we won. And again, it was it was hilarious because I would have to go get recertified while I was an honor guard, so I wasn’t even doing the job and still winning load crew of the quarter.
Brian Schoenborn 13:07
That’s awesome.
Mike Fraser 13:10
Like, how do you do that? I’m like, this is such an easy job.
Brian Schoenborn 13:14
So when so you’re talking NBC gear and just for the listeners, you know, because they’re not everyone’s military, right? So NBC is nuclear, biological, chemical, you know, protective. This would be protective suits to protect you from like inhaling bad gases or whatever, right?
Mike Fraser 13:27
Exactly, yeah.
Brian Schoenborn 13:29
Reminds me of in boot camp doing the CS gas qualification.
Mike Fraser 13:34
Yeah. So I mean, we did that in…so I went to basic training right before 911. And so July, so I went in in July, and we had what they called Black Flag almost every day where about early, mid-afternoon they would stop everybody from marching because they want people passing out outside because ours is in Lachlan Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas.
Brian Schoenborn 13:58
Okay.
Mike Fraser 13:58
So it gets pretty hot. They’re to July, August. When we at the end of basic training we had I think we had three or four people fall out of formation were marching and doing…
Brian Schoenborn 14:10
When you’re marching?
Mike Fraser 14:10
Doing our final march, yeah. It’s like, doof! Okay.
Brian Schoenborn 14:14
Sounds like the Air Force.
Mike Fraser 14:17
All right. I guess you couldn’t hang. Like it was only six weeks. Come on.
Brian Schoenborn 14:23
I know, right? Six?
Mike Fraser 14:25
Yeah, six weeks. It’s now eight, but it was six.
Brian Schoenborn 14:27
Oh, big, big changes. Ourswas 13. Just for boot dude, just for basic.
Mike Fraser 14:33
You gotta see if you have the wherewithal, because it only gets worse from there.
Brian Schoenborn 14:42
You think it’s gonna get better. You get that eagle, globe, and anchor, right? That title Marine, you’re like, “Oh, yes, I made it.”
Mike Fraser 14:47
In the Air Force, you’re like how you get through that and you go to a really nice tech school where you have you know,
Brian Schoenborn 14:54
So so when I was in the Corps, a 13 weeks of Boot Camp, 60 to 80 guys in one squad bay. So just imagine like a giant like almost like a hostile or something. Yeah, this shitty metal racks, bunk beds with a shity, shity mattresses, you know, a thin green sheet. Rock hard pillow, and you just gotta you’re just expected to sleep on that for three months straight. You get then you get like, you know, to school of industry, right? So then you go to SoI and it’s the same thing. Another 13 weeks, right? Everyone’s sleeping in the same damn squad day, shitty bunk beds. And once you finally get into the fleet, or you know you get assigned your unit out of school, then you know I was an infantry so I was assigned to an infantry area in Camp Pendleton. And, you know, then we got barracks, so it’s a little different. But our barracks were like, condemned housing.
Oh sure. Sounds like a dream.
Mike Fraser 14:54
You’re doing I’m going from, you know, 30 trainees, you know, going to airman in you’re, in basic training. So everybody’s got you know, you got bed and your footlocker and so on. In the Marines, so that continues on for a long time. In the Air Force, you go to tech school and it’s like, oh, cool now it’s only 3 to a room in tech school, right? Maybe two to a room, depending if you get lucky. And then once you get to your first base, you may have to share a bathroom you might have to…
Oh, geez,
Brian Schoenborn 16:21
They’re condemned housing. And there were two to a room and there were two, you know, each, each room there were two rooms next to each other and they shared a bathroom. So there’s four people sharing one bathroom, got to be up and ready for morning formation by like 0-6, you know six o’clock in the morning.
Mike Fraser 16:37
That’s brutal. Yeah, we, the worst part about ours was we had brand new, brand new buildings in tech school for some of the people there, but I never got the brand new ones. I got one of the older buildings so it was like…
Brian Schoenborn 16:52
Oh, like two or three years old?
Mike Fraser 16:52
They ended up having to like kick us out for a few days because they had to then fixing this asbestos problem. That was that was the worst.
Brian Schoenborn 16:58
That was the worst?
Mike Fraser 16:59
It wasn’t condemned though, so.
Brian Schoenborn 17:00
We lived in condemned housing.
Mike Fraser 17:03
So like I was it, maybe like six months after I got there they were like, “Oh, you can go off base now.” So I got to go off base in pretty short order
Brian Schoenborn 17:11
Like, live off-base?
Mike Fraser 17:13
I wasn’t married I didn’t get married or anything. Yeah, no, no.
Brian Schoenborn 17:17
That’s crazy.
Mike Fraser 17:19
Like, I mean, you need to be, you know, respectable airman who’s you know?
Brian Schoenborn 17:24
Sure, you gotta have your shit together.
Mike Fraser 17:25
Like oh yeah, you’re constantly doing things that, remember when I was the load crew of the…
Brian Schoenborn 17:32
Yes, you were the LeBron of load crews. That’s how I should have done the intro.
Mike Fraser 17:38
Yeah.
Brian Schoenborn 17:38
Our guest today is the LeBron James of load crews.
Mike Fraser 17:43
But it’s funny so I did that job. But then I went to support and which we essentially with you know, you check out tools to people but I wanted to be a part of like the IT side of the house, I helped them. We were putting in the, they were putting in the first wireless network on the flight line. And so we were working on putting in some of the laptop, the new Panasonic tough books, were doing laptops and stuff. So I was helping out a little bit with that. And then that’s how I set up everything for my first business where I could work mid-shift. And so that was after I was done with the Honor Guard, went to work and support. Again, I’m doing all this load crew stuff and still winning awards. But I worked in a different job.
Brian Schoenborn 18:22
So you’re doing load crew, you’re doing mid-shift, which I don’t even know what that is. Because in the Marines, you just you’re always on.
Mike Fraser 18:28
So there’s three different shifts.
Brian Schoenborn 18:29
Oh, you guys got three shifts.
Mike Fraser 18:30
Three shifts, and so mid-shift was the 11 o’clock at night to seven in the morning.
Brian Schoenborn 18:34
Oh, graveyard.
Mike Fraser 18:35
Yeah, graveyard. Mid-shift.
Brian Schoenborn 18:36
Yep.
Mike Fraser 18:37
So I worked that one no reason I did that is because I could I could, I wanted to start my first business. And I wanted to start going full school full time because I was a you know, crazy 19-year-old.
Brian Schoenborn 18:49
And so you got like three jobs essentially.
Mike Fraser 18:51
Yeah, essentially three jobs. And so I’m doing so I started up a mailbox store and a computer repair shop. 19 years old. And so I got a great story from that. So I start, we start doing the build out and we’re working with this other guy and we’re doing the build out in this new space. We end up getting was called a postnet so this is back before when like mailboxes, etc. was popular. Postnets are still around and so somebody had had completed their lease at a postnet and they didn’t want it any more. So we went over and looked at this place and they had like $50,000 worth of equipment. They had key machines, and all the mailboxes, they had just all kinds of stuff.
Brian Schoenborn 19:26
…and they left it all there?
Mike Fraser 19:27
All there, like a super industrial scale to weight all your shipping and stuff. So I was like, “This is cool.” So we got in we get the we get the place and we start remodeling the inside.
Brian Schoenborn 19:37
And this was in Vegas, you said?
Mike Fraser 19:39
In Vegas and so I have, so I’m in there one day with my BDUs on they come in to do the inspection for the fire extinguishers and make sure everything’s kosher there. And, and so they come in like “Hey, where’s the owner of the store? I’m in my BDUs and mind you…
Brian Schoenborn 19:55
BDUs being camouflage. The blue and light blue or whatever.
Mike Fraser 19:59
No, no, we had the green, the old green cammies. So we had BDUs on, battle dress uniforms is what they’re called. And so I have that on and I’m in there. And the inspector comes in and says, “Hey, I’m looking for the the owner.” I’m like, “No, no, I’m the owner.” She’s like, “No, no, I’m looking for the owner of this place.” Like, “No, no, I’m the owner.”
Brian Schoenborn 20:17
You’ve got like a baby boy face you’re like, “I’m the boss, bitch.”
Mike Fraser 20:20
Oh, yeah. So I’ll show you my ID from back then. This is I mean, I literally look like I was 14 I would go on the Strip, and I would get the the the cops on bikes. They would come up to me after 10pm because in Vegas, there’s a curfew for teenagers. So they’re like, “You need to go to Strip.” Like, “No, no, I’m actually serving my country here. Base here in this base.” “Oh, we’re sorry, sir.”
Brian Schoenborn 20:44
“We’re sorry, sir.” Oh my god, dude. You look like you were about 12.
Mike Fraser 20:50
Yeah. So she’s in there and says, like, “No, I need to talk to the owner.” I’m like, “Okay.” So I had to bring out all of the paperwork and like prove it. She’s like, “Oh, I’m so sorry.” I’m like, “Why can’t I be a young person opening up a store?” It’s gonna surprise and you’re like don’t judge me for thinking that I’m like trying to put on a facade for you like I’m masquerading as somebody else. I’m like, “No, no, I’m legitimately opening up the store. Yes, I’m in the Air Force and yes,”
Brian Schoenborn 21:19
…agism goes both ways.
Mike Fraser 21:20
Yeah, I mean, I got agism constantly back then and all through my 20s Yeah, it was ridiculous. But I was I was doing I was in school full-time. I was taking four classes. I was running, I opened up the store, was running the store, and I was working mid-shift at the time. So I was just juggling all three of those for about 18 months and I got, I got pretty burnt out.
Brian Schoenborn 21:43
I was gonna say, dude, like, how do you keep going on that?
Mike Fraser 21:45
You’re just. Yeah, just, just keep going.
Brian Schoenborn 21:48
How much were you sleeping at night? In a 24-hour rotation…
Mike Fraser 21:53
Yean, I mean, maybe six hours if I was lucky, four to six hours.
Brian Schoenborn 21:57
Four to six?
Mike Fraser 21:57
Yeah.
Brian Schoenborn 21:58
Six is okay, but four…
Mike Fraser 21:59
Sometimes I’d get eight in if I can, I could time it right. But that was always like, oh, the people that were supposed to open up the store that worked for me were actually there. Like, if not I was there. So that always came back on me. But yeah, that was that was interesting. And I would never recommend anybody in the entrepreneurial. If you have an entrepreneurial spirit, you want to start a business, don’t do retail.
Brian Schoenborn 22:21
And don’t also juggle that with a full-time military career. And a full-time college load.
Mike Fraser 22:27
Yeah, but if you’re gonna do it, do it in 19. Although, you know, recently, I just did the same thing. So I fasttracked my way through my bachelor’s and master’s in…
Brian Schoenborn 22:35
Oh that’s right, you telling me about thata.
Mike Fraser 22:36
Yeah, so I went back to school, and decided to do the same thing where I was juggling that plus teaching plus a full-time corporate job plus my startup, plus a family. So that’s even more than I was going on it.
Brian Schoenborn 22:47
That’s crazy.
Mike Fraser 22:48
Yeah, the good thing that was I have a wife who was like, “Yeah, no, Michael, some of these things are gonna have to stop. And some of these, you need to finish because your GI bill’s expiring. So yeah.”
Brian Schoenborn 23:00
Nice. I want to back it up a second. I’m not sure where this fits in. But I want to talk a little bit about setting up some tents or something with your NBC gear?
Mike Fraser 23:12
Oh yeah, so so I um…,
Brian Schoenborn 23:15
Are you talking about, are these like the Air Force tents that are like Club Med, you know? Private pools?
I was gonna say, I mean it sounds about right. That’s what I heard.
Mike Fraser 23:18
Yeah, air conditioning and no private pools. Saunas and massage tables.
Only when you get deployed Yes, so I was I was active to about I was active for a little over three years and then I transitioned into the guard and then the guard I changed into a, essentially, a computer systems engineer slash cyber security engineer role.
Brian Schoenborn 23:50
So that’s when you got into the cyber security.
Mike Fraser 23:51
Yeah, yeah. And so, I was working. I was it was so I was working that role and or a starting that job and in the guard, you can do that before you even go through training. And so I was going, so I went and I started actually in the Reno Air National Guard unit and I transitioned to the guard unit in California. California Guard unit in a Van Nuys, California and so I would go out there once a month and we had…we ended up having to do NBC gear for training again. And so we’re in Southern California and it’s probably 100 degrees but it’s also fairly humid. And they want us to actually set up everything with our NBC gear on, so we end up having to put all the gear on and but then unlike the aircraft, you know, the armament stuff I was doing with weapons systems where it was like, you know, hey, I’m using like, a, you know, wrenches and you know, larger tools that you can, you know, still manipulate with gloves on and stuff. Now in NBC gear we had Panasonic tough books I’m doing you know, a technical stuff, and there’s no way to type on him so…
Brian Schoenborn 25:02
…so, so for those who don’t know, NBC here it looks like think of like, maybe like Jurassic Park when they’re trying to touch these like, the radioactive material or some shit like these giant ass suits. These huge gloves, this hooded thing over your head right with nothing but like a plastic window kind of thing is,
Mike Fraser 25:20
Man, it’s actual gas mask.
Brian Schoenborn 25:24
So you’re sitting there in 100 degree heat, it’s like probably like 60% humidity, right?
Mike Fraser 25:29
Probably even more.
Brian Schoenborn 25:30
Maybe even more. Yeah. And you’re just you got this gas mask on you basically breathing into your own face.
Mike Fraser 25:35
So doing you’re doing that and then you’re trying to think…
Brian Schoenborn 25:41
…and you’re trying to like, tinker, right? Or whatever you’re doing.
Mike Fraser 25:44
So the only way to actually do work on the Panasonic Toughbook was, we’re using the eraser heads of pencils on them, because there’s no, you have no dexterity with the the gloves on and then Panasonic Toughbook because they’re made for industrial environments. The keyboard is completely waterproof, that also means that the keys are all you know, sealed together. So that mean they work independently but you have to like really push on each key to get it to input. And so there was…so anyway, long story short I mean it for every one hour of work and we’re spending hours and we’re trying to get stuff done, so I worked through an entire weekend through the training with NBC gear on. No sleep whatsoever.
Brian Schoenborn 26:26
The whole, wait, the whole weekend in this gear?
Mike Fraser 26:28
Yeah.
Brian Schoenborn 26:29
Were you wearing this…
Mike Fraser 26:30
No, wearing the NBC, yep.
Brian Schoenborn 26:31
You’re playing with pencil you’re, you’re basically finger pressing keyboards with the pencils. Yeah, the whole weekend.
Mike Fraser 26:36
Exactly. Exactly.
Brian Schoenborn 26:37
No sleep?
Mike Fraser 26:38
No sleep, no sleep.
Brian Schoenborn 26:39
Jesus Christ.
Mike Fraser 26:40
Cuz I was like, well, we gotta get this done. Furthermore, you know, not to not to throw guard people under the bus. But you realize like in the guard, a lot of people in the guard, they don’t do the same job in the civilian world that they’re doing in the guard.
Brian Schoenborn 26:54
Right.
Mike Fraser 26:54
So if they have nothing more than tech school, they’re really not engaged. They didn’t really contribute a whole lot. And so it kind of sucked. But I mean, it was it was good and bad. The good part was, you know, if you knew what you were doing you, you get to, you know, do all kinds of cool stuff. The downside to it was you could work entire weekends without sleep, just because you’re like, well, we gotta get this done. We need to get through this exercise, we need to get this and we don’t get the exercise done. You know, then we could, you know, fail whatever we were doing.
Brian Schoenborn 27:22
Yeah, yeah. Mmhmm.
Mike Fraser 27:23
So it was one of those things where I was like, now I’ll put in the time. But I’ll tell you what, it also was one of the things you were just you get burnt out, because you’re just like, Oh, this is…
Brian Schoenborn 27:32
I mean, I can’t even imagine.
Mike Fraser 27:33
…so much. So much work that you end up doing. And so little time and again, you know, the guard is one weekend a month and two weeks a year so, and I was running my startup or my computer company as well. And so I would try to consolidate a bunch of weekends at a time. So I’d go out there for like, three, four days straight and just do all three, four days and then bounce back so I could do a few months at a time instead of having to go every single month.
Brian Schoenborn 28:00
I didn’t know you had that option.
Mike Fraser 28:01
Yeah, well, yeah, you just have to try to figure out if you can, you can make that work.
Brian Schoenborn 28:06
Air Force is flexible. Air Force caters to you, I get it.
Mike Fraser 28:11
The Chair Force, the Civilian Branch.
Brian Schoenborn 28:12
The Chair Force! Well, it’s cool. That’s crazy. Like, I mean, like I said, I couldn’t even imagine like sitting in a in a suit like that. In that type of weather conditions, you know, for three days, or whatever.
Mike Fraser 28:25
Oh yeah yeah. It’s brutal.
Brian Schoenborn 28:27
I’m surprised, you didn’t like pass out from heat exhaustion or just sleep deprivation or whatever.
Mike Fraser 28:32
That’s why you just keep on, keep on truckin.
Brian Schoenborn 28:34
Yeah. I hear that. For sure.
Mike Fraser 28:37
Plus I was in my 20s, not in my 30s. If I tried to do that now, I could probably still do it now. But it would be more mental than physical. So I just like power through.
Brian Schoenborn 28:44
Yeah. Yeah. I know, I hear that. What other kind of and they’ve got some other stores something about Keesler? Keesler Air Force Base?
Mike Fraser 28:55
Yeah. So
Brian Schoenborn 28:56
I know you were saying something about that?
Mike Fraser 28:57
Yeah. So interesting story. So yeah, I was I was at Keesler Air Force Base and if everybody doesn’t know where Keesler is, it’s in Biloxi, Mississippi. And so,
Brian Schoenborn 29:08
Which Biloxi is, I mean, just geograpically…
Mike Fraser 29:09
It’s on the Gulf Coast.
Brian Schoenborn 29:11
It’s on the coast?
Mike Fraser 29:11
Yeah, literally on the coast. So we so I am, so I get, so I try to get my Guard unit to, to not send me to tech school because I have, you know, civilian world understanding of the tech school they’re gonna send me through and like, I already know all this stuff. And I’m like, nope, you so I’ll go through training. And then I say, “Well, I have my business too. And I’m literally like, the only person that has like an outside business said that I’m actually running. I don’t have a job. I actually have a business I’m running.”
And so they say, “No, you’re going.” So I ended up having to shut down my company, right in the middle of a couple projects. Yeah. Thankfully had a really nice family that let me go live with them for a little bit before I went in. So I was able to kind of, you know, I didn’t have to deal with you know, having a place or anything else. So I got my orders. Oh, and this There’s actually another funny story and then I’ll get into what the Keesler. So I ended up going to the airport. They ended up canceling my flight that day. And I was flying from Vegas up to Reno to get my orders to then come back to Vegas to fly out of Vegas. So I ended up hopping in my car and driving from Vegas to Reno which is a seven hour drive, to get the order to sign off.
Brian Schoenborn 30:20
But that, but like that highway though. Like, I’ve taken that road like it’s just like long and straight. Like, like you can see like 20 miles ahead of you.
Mike Fraser 30:27
You know, it’s it’s the…god forbid you break down.
Brian Schoenborn 30:31
That, but I also remember like, I’ve driven up that way. I remember seeing like a semi. It’s like a semi coming the other way. And you’re watching it for like 20, 30 minutes and it finally gets to you.
Mike Fraser 30:44
It’s so far down. But so, so so I get my orders. I turn around and I’m driving back right? It was all on the same day.
Brian Schoenborn 30:52
Yeah. You drove to Reno and back?
Mike Fraser 30:54
I drove all the way to Reno from Vegas and back then it gets better. So I’m driving back and I’m trying to get back as fast as possible. I’m going going pretty fast over the speed limit. And I get pulled over…
Brian Schoenborn 31:05
We don’t need to incriminate ourselves.
Mike Fraser 31:06
Ah no, no. This is a good story. So I get I get pulled over and the guy walks up and he’s like, “Where are you coming from?” I’m like, “Well, I’m coming from coming from Reno Air National Guard unit. and he’s like, “You how fast you were going?” and I’m like, “No, but you’re gonna tell me, right?”
It was like 20 over and he’s like, “You know, I could take it a gym right now but I’m just gonna give you a warning. And I’m going to call and I’m going to make you know put this in I’m gonna give you a warning and just going off and thank you for serving our country, but please be responsible.” So I’m like, “Okay.”
So I can ask as I’m driving so about two hours later, didn’t learn my lesson, speedin’ again, then I get pulled over again. And I’m thinking myself as the officers walking up like God, I hope you didn’t like put something on my actual record cuz I had no, I had notickets or anything. I had nothing. super clean, squeaky clean record. And you can walk up to the car and he’s like, “You know that we, you know fast you were going?” and I’m like, “No you’re gonna tell me, right?” Same thing. And I was going like really fast, and so he he comes he comes back and he’s like, “Everything looks fine but I’m gonna I’m gonna give you off the warning too.” And I’m like, wow, my god okay, but he’s like, “I’m gonna tell you this, right, you have two more counties you have to drive through. I’m radioing ahead, letting them know you’re coming, because we know all the cars are coming because you know there’s not that much traffic it’s coming in between Reno and there. So as long as long as you see the speed limit I’ll let you off.”
So he walks away and like oh my god I just, I just dodged another bullet, and so I I drive, I start driving out of there. I put my car in cruise control exactly the speed limit 70 miles an hour all the way back, so I’m so after that so then I get I get it I get back and I fly out the next day so I’m like, Oh, that was that was crisis averted twice.
Brian Schoenborn 32:58
Yeah, no shit. Like, I mean, they could have taken your car, you could have gone to jail.
Mike Fraser 33:02
Yeah, yeah.
Brian Schoenborn 33:03
Wreckless driving or whatever it is.
Mike Fraser 33:05
Yeah, so ever since then I’ve been a very, very, very good driver and not deal with that again. But I was young and you know, I was trying to get back I was just like, “Good god, I missed my flight. It’s an hour flight to Reno. Now I’m driving 14, 15 plus hours back and forth, and I gotta fly out the next day.
Brian Schoenborn 33:23
All because you missed your flight.
Mike Fraser 33:24
Yeah, exactly. Like you can’t give me these orders? You can’t fax em to me? No, no, you gotta be here in person, like, oh my god. So I get so anyway, so I fly. I fly to Biloxi. I start, start my tech school. And that year before they had just finished our, our building our training building that we were in, and it was hurricane proof. So we started tech school and I’m going through tech school in 2005. Right?
Brian Schoenborn 33:51
You had a brand new building?
Mike Fraser 33:52
Brand new building.
Oh it must be nice.
So July, it was super nice. Yeah, Air Force. Air Force all the way.
Brian Schoenborn 33:56
Marines don’t get anything new. We get whatever the Army or Air Force doesn’t want anymore.
Mike Fraser 34:01
Yeah, we don’t want this anymore. You can have it. So we so we So, so we started tech school. And because I stopped my…
Brian Schoenborn 34:10
I heard that in my microphone.
Mike Fraser 34:12
Yeah.
Brian Schoenborn 34:13
So they’re playing nerf basketball in the office next door.
Mike Fraser 34:15
Somebody alley-ooped. So they, so they do a…so, so we started tech school up and so of course I again I shut my business down, so they let me stay off base because they didn’t have any base housing and so we so I’m like, Oh cool. So I’m like at Howard Johnson right off base, and the guy who owns it, he owns like five different hotels and they have no Wi Fi. They’re all wired. So I’m like perfect opportunity. I’m going to serve, I’m gonna I’m gonna propose to him to install Wi Fi as a pilot, and if he likes it here during the entire time I have tech school I will do all of his hotels.
So I start getting everything set up. I’m going do the implementation in the in and then this one August end of August. They tell us, “Come, come on to the base because Katrina is coming. There’s this Hurricane Katrina thing that’s coming.” And we’re like, “Okay, and I mind you as a teenager I was in Florida, so I went through a few hurricanes.”
Brian Schoenborn 35:11
Yeah, for sure.
Mike Fraser 35:12
So I’m thinking myself, okay. But then they’re like, it’s category 5. I’m like, now there’s no freaking way. We’re going to the base and we’re going to start, we’re gonna start at school the next day. So optimistic. We’re in a hurricane rebuilding. We’re going to start up tech school the next day. I’m just like, yeah, that’s not happening. But it’s cool. I’m gonna bring some of, some of my gear, because we need to set up to have a LAN party so, and the LAN party is where essentially we all set up our laptops and we play games.
Brian Schoenborn 35:36
Yeah, exactly.
Mike Fraser 35:38
So I built, we built that the LAN, and mind you were all like nerds there. So it’s, so we set up everything. And we have, we have all our cell phone so we hooked up all the cell phones so we can we could talk through the LAN on IM, so we’re all talking til like 3am in the morning when the cell phone towers battery and generator batteries go out and when everything just down. But we were talking to there was no, there’s no further point of communication through the cell towers and that’s when Hurricane Katrina is coming full on.
Brian Schoenborn 36:05
Yeah.
Mike Fraser 36:06
And so it comes on full on, and we see like, even before the eye of the storm comes and knocks out you know, everything gets knocked out later on. The very beginning of the storm, I’m seeing, like, little buildings getting just lifted up out of the ground and flying down the flightline.
Brian Schoenborn 36:23
No shit? Crazy.
Mike Fraser 36:24
Oh, yeah, there’s like just massive debris everywhere. And we’re in this hurricane-proof building. So we’re all good, although it sprouted a leak.
Brian Schoenborn 36:32
It’s not quite hurricane-proof, like, 99%.
Mike Fraser 36:35
Yeah, it was hurricane-proof to the point that we wouldn’t die in our winds, right? You know, we could all drown from the water, too, but we had a leak and they were playing like you know, so we’re playing LAN parties and there’s a generator in the building so we’re playing that and we’re all good there. And the next day rolls around and the hurricane, you know, passes and the aftermath is just you know, obviously you know, now, devastating.
Brian Schoenborn 36:59
Yeah, for sure. No joke.
Mike Fraser 37:00
So we, so we, we walk outside and we’re just like yeah we’re, we’re not starting school up today and we’re also probably not heading home anytime soon. So for about the next two weeks we start helping clean up the base and so we’re having to flush toilets, you know, having to, like, not flush toilets if we, you know, for you know yeah conserve water. Eating MREs and they ran out food pretty quickly.
Brian Schoenborn 37:28
Oh you guys had to eat MREs?
Mike Fraser 37:29
Yeah, it was tough.
Brian Schoenborn 37:32
What was your favorite one?
Mike Fraser 37:32
Oh, man.
Brian Schoenborn 37:35
Did you guys use the steno cans? You probably did huh?
Mike Fraser 37:37
No, we had the, the bags with the…
Brian Schoenborn 37:40
The heating thing?
Mike Fraser 37:41
Yeah, the heating bag. But it’s the bag so they we just throw in the bag and it heats up in the bag.
Brian Schoenborn 37:46
I mean, that’s high-tech.
Mike Fraser 37:47
Yeah. Oh, man.
Brian Schoenborn 37:48
We had the steno can option but we could never use them. So we just ate all our shit cold.
Mike Fraser 37:52
Cause you can turn them into like little bombs.
Brian Schoenborn 37:54
Yeah, right exactly. Like my, god man, I remember the five fingers of death. It was the hot dog MRE.
Mike Fraser 38:00
Oh yeah. Ugh. We had really we had we had we had really nice ones we had like beef stew and…
Brian Schoenborn 38:08
I think I had beef stew.
Mike Fraser 38:09
Yeah, we had we have a spaghetti and meatballs.
Brian Schoenborn 38:13
Oh nice, that sounds awesome.
Mike Fraser 38:13
Yeah, there was…Yeah, there was all kinds of some really good ones.
Brian Schoenborn 38:16
That’s some quality food there.
Mike Fraser 38:17
They have a, I wouldn’t say high quality. Higher quality than that…
Brian Schoenborn 38:22
God, I remember the beef stew. Oy! We used to eat that shit cold because you know, when we’re in the inventory, we’re just we’re in the field, right? so we’re like camping out, like camping out and nothing but our sleeping bags and our weapons, right, and our backpacks. But they would say you can’t light the steno cans because that makes you a target, obviously, right? So we’re eating like cold ass like, you know, like, like beef stew like when it’s cold. It’s like you know, like if you ever look at like, like beef or like pork or something
Mike Fraser 38:49
Yeah, it coagulates.
Brian Schoenborn 38:49
It coagulated, right? So the fat is like thick and white and stuff. That’s what you’re eating in this beef stew.
Mike Fraser 38:55
At least you can still recognize it’s fat though. So that’s good, right?
Brian Schoenborn 38:59
Hardly. It’s a whitish substance.
Mike Fraser 39:02
This is supposed to be nutritious, okay, fine. Yeah so we just and we would have they would have cookies and candy and ours and so we’d have some people are just like stockpiling that so you just like, grab as many…
Brian Schoenborn 39:16
Like selling them, it becomes currency, like cigarettes in prison?
Mike Fraser 39:19
So we’re like, okay, fine. So I end up, one…they had had all of the cars of everybody that drove there driven there parked between the hangers, and the hangers have old tar and gravel roofs and so they just became like projectiles. And we got out, it looked like somebody just taken a machine gun and just shot up the all the cars…
We don’t get to like yeah, we didn’t get to that becoming currency in Keesler. It was getting close. So, so we were there for almost two weeks and they come into and, you know, we hadn’t showered. We’re conserving water, the nice thing is we still had a generator so we’re still playing LAN and the Xbox is fine. It’s going constant, the PlayStation, all the way through but that got old too. And so finally we’re just we they come in, they give us orders that just say fill in your name and figure out how to get home.
Brian Schoenborn 40:12
Jesus.
Mike Fraser 40:13
…windows busted out and everything so one of the guys that I was there with, he was from Atlanta and so he’s like, he had still his windshield in tact, he had a quarter tank of ga. He’s like, “Hey let’s, let’s bounce.” We threw all our bags in the back of his truck and we roll out of there. When we get to Alabama and you know it is looking, so even before we drove out of it so we drove out of there, and two of the three bridges that connected the mainland to the beach side were knocked out, and so there’s just one bridge to fly over. And when I was driving over, I could actually see there was like a I think they got to Sav-a-Lot where people were like going there to get food, and you could see like fights breaking out like just full on like little riots, little fights happening down here and just like…
Brian Schoenborn 40:54
You know what’s funny is like most people when when you think about Katrina, you think about New Orleans, right? You know, Biloxi and Alabama, obviously it’s east of that, like, at least me like I don’t typically think like those areas were as affected…
Mike Fraser 41:09
Yeah, yeah but we had like this…
Brian Schoenborn 41:10
…we hear about this stuff with the windows blown out and like you know people fighting over food and the Save-a-Lot and stuff like that like you know it was a big ass hurricane, dude.
Mike Fraser 41:18
Yeah I mean, the aftermath of what happened in Biloxi was, was I mean the entire beach side there was like one there was a casino there’s a restaurant casino was like it was like an old pirate…It was like it looked like to be like an old pirate ship ended up like a mile or two down the road. I mean, it was like crazy stuff happening. The Hard Rock Casino got flooded on multiple floors and they were just about to open. That happened because I ended up in one of the casinos playing blackjack before it happened and they were all at Imperial Palace there, and they and they were like “Oh yeah we’re gonna start out here,” and then I was like, “Katrina is coming, like, no you’re not there’s no way. No way.”
And a there was like I think over 1000 people are supposed to start work there and they all got dispersed to other Hard Rocks around the world. So yeah, it was it was it was pretty crazy but the hotel that I was doing work at got completely wiped out too, and then, so back to getting out of Keesler. So we booked it out of there and we get to Alabama and pull into a, a gas station and there’s like 200 people deep because everybody needs fuel and they’re trying to get out, and so I was like, “Nah, we have pull up to the cops that are up there like trying to keep pandemonium from breaking out.” And the cops are like, “Oh yeah, you’re you’re come from Keesler? Yeah, we’ll let you in.” So they let us in. Everybody’s like cheering us on to like drive in the front. Get gas.
Brian Schoenborn 42:42
They’re cheering on the patriots that are also trying to run from the storm.
Mike Fraser 42:45
We’re trying to get out of here! We’ve already put in our two weeks. We just want to get home. So, so we so I get to the airport and he drops me off get the airport and walk up to the to the airline, and go to get a ticket, and I’m saying like 10 feet back because I smell like just yeah.
Brian Schoenborn 43:05
Hell. Boiled asshole I think is the proper term.
Mike Fraser 43:07
Yeah. Exactly. It’s a marine term.
Brian Schoenborn 43:12
That’s right.
Mike Fraser 43:14
And so I was like, I just wanna I just want a first class ticket back home, and I want to get back home, so I ended up getting a first class ticket home. Booked at the nicest hotel they had there, the Crowne Plaza, Crown Point, crown crown something.
Brian Schoenborn 43:28
Yeah.
Mike Fraser 43:29
Booked the hotel room got like 100 and some odd dollars worth of room service. I think I took like a three hour shower.
Brian Schoenborn 43:36
You’re making up for lost time.
Mike Fraser 43:39
So it was just like, oh, man, so get back. It was just like, yeah, it’s crazy. And we never ever end up going back to tech school, because, I mean, it took them forever and a day to repair the base. At the same time, I think the the chief of, one of the chiefs at the base got like, dinged for looting too, looting the PX.
Brian Schoenborn 43:59
Really? Really? Really?
Mike Fraser 44:02
There’s a full-on story about it, it’s like what? What?
Brian Schoenborn 44:05
There’s a storm and he’s like, “We’re all gonna die!”
Mike Fraser 44:13
That’s where your mind goes, I’m gonna go take some stuff from the PX. All right.
Brian Schoenborn 44:21
That’s leadership.
Mike Fraser 44:21
Yeah, yeah. Good times.
Brian Schoenborn 44:24
That’s funny.
Mike Fraser 44:25
Yeah. So I end up, so I’m leaving there, but that that’s…Yeah, so I was actually in Hurricane Katrina as it hit there in Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Mississippi. So that’s uh, yeah, not too many people can have the kind of fame like said the only place closer could have been New Orleans. Yeah. I think Biloxi got hit pretty bad too. I mean, the fact that they couldn’t even get us out of the base for two weeks or two weeks couldn’t had to give us orders where we essentially just throw our name and there was like, no, there was no process. There was no there’s nothing anywhere just like, get out. We can’t deal with you anymore.
Brian Schoenborn 44:59
So tech school’s cancelled.
Mike Fraser 45:00
Yeah.
Brian Schoenborn 45:01
Did you got your did you get your certificate or whatever?
Mike Fraser 45:04
No, never, never did.
Brian Schoenborn 45:06
Nothing ever came from that?
Mike Fraser 45:07
Cuz I was like, I’m not going back to tech school again. You want me to uproot my life all over again at a later point in time? No. That’s ridiculous. So.
Brian Schoenborn 45:15
I remember I was in college, actually, this was after I was out of the Corps. I was in this business fraternity. And I was the social chair. And when Hurricane Katrina hit, it was pretty devastating. I went to school up in Michigan in the state of Michigan. As social chair, I threw this Kegs for Katrina party. And essentially,
Mike Fraser 45:43
Why did you send any to to us at Keesler man? We would have been down with some kegs.
Brian Schoenborn 45:47
We brought the people in for the drinks.
Mike Fraser 45:50
We needed kegs.
Brian Schoenborn 45:51
We had something like 500 people, we had two DJs dude. Like, it was crazy. And we were just charging five bucks a head and like, you know, so it’s like 20, what’s 5 times 500? 2,500 bucks? That’s not a huge amount of money, but we took all that money and send it the Red Cross and, you know, try to help people out in need. But that was a pretty crazy storm man. You know, I actually I lived, I lived through a hurricane as well.
Mike Fraser 46:16
Which one?
Brian Schoenborn 46:17
Hurricane Sandy. I was in Hoboken at the time. This is just before I left America.
Mike Fraser 46:23
He’s back though. By the way.
Brian Schoenborn 46:24
I’m back. I’m in Seattle right now. I was an agent for about four years. But I’m back. I’m in Seattle right now. I’ll be elsewhere soon. But I remember, so actually two hurricanes I survived. I was in Boston when Hurricane Irene came through and everyone’s freaking out, “Oh, my God, Hurricane Irene!” I bought a hurricane emergency kit, you know, in the form of pizzas and beers.
Mike Fraser 46:48
Yeah.
Brian Schoenborn 46:48
Right? Me and my roommate, my girlfriend at the time and his girl, whatever. Like, we’re all holing up in our house. And they’re like, “Oh, the hurricane’s coming.” And I go outside for like hours and it was just like a mist. Like I’m drinking beers on the, “You call this a storm?”
Mike Fraser 47:07
Like the calm before the storm.
Brian Schoenborn 47:08
Like Lieutenant Dan and shit. No, no, but it never happened. It didn’t really it just like brushed over it. So then when I was living in New York like a year or so later whenever Hurricane Sandy…
Mike Fraser 47:18
You were just like hurricanes a breeze. It’s not big deal.
Brian Schoenborn 47:20
Yeah, right? I’m like, “This hurricane is gonna be huge? Okay, whatever.” So I’m in Hoboken and Hoboken is right, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s on the New Jersey side of the Hudson River.
Mike Fraser 47:30
I know. Because I know Cake Boss.
Brian Schoenborn 47:31
Yeah, exactly. I know. Right? Yeah. But it’s, you know, it’s it’s right next to New York City. Next to Manhattan, right? It’s just on the other side of the river. I went to the shore as the hurricane was coming in. And that one was no fucking joke, dude. I brought my girlfriend out there with me. She was from China. And she’s, she’s standing there. She’s like five feet tall, like 90 pounds. She’s going, “This is crazy! Why are you doing this to me?” And I’m like, “I wanna check this out.”
Mike Fraser 48:01
You didn’t have your you have your hurricane-proof building that you were in, inside?
Brian Schoenborn 48:06
Oh, I mean we went to, we went back there.
Mike Fraser 48:08
But you went to the, did you go to the the amusement park on that roller coasters, right there on the beach right as it was coming in?
Brian Schoenborn 48:15
I should have! I don’t know, we just went to the ,we just went to the little coast where you can go in the water whatever like a beachhead.
Mike Fraser 48:20
No, you shouldn’t have because that whole thing got like completely annihilated.
Didn’t Sandy happened like, like close to fall? It was like colder then too?
Brian Schoenborn 48:23
Yeah, I know. So like, we saw this coming in like, trees are like, blowing like halfway over right? There were like the, like the street signs were, like, flailing like hardcore in the wind. You know, so we made our way back to to our apartment. And we’re like, “Holy shit is crazy.” And at one point like this emergency alarm went off like a fire alarm or something. And like right after that happened, power gone. Cell phone towers gone. Electric gone. You know, we had a refrigerator full of food. But I’m like, “Oh, we can’t even cook this stuff.” I find out what, we had no power for like over a week. We eventually made our way, we somehow we made our way into the city, and it was like going from the Stone Age into the modern times.
Yeah i was just before Halloween.
Mike Fraser 49:15
Yeah it was pretty late, yeah. It was like super it was getting pretty chilly…
Brian Schoenborn 49:19
So we were wearing jackets when this happened. Yeah we were wearing jackets and then like a couple days later it snowed, right?
Mike Fraser 49:25
Yeah, okay that’s that’s what I remember. Yeah, yeah, that’s like that’s like the epitome of like never happening ever except this one time.
Brian Schoenborn 49:34
Well, and here’s the thing about Sandy was like, you know, it was raining hard right? Winds crazy, right? But it wasn’t the floo-, the downpour that caused all the damage. You know, we had American Red Cross, Army National Guard was there, CNN was there. Diane Sawyer was over there covering it, like that sort of thing. Um, it wasn’t so much the downpour. It was the storm surge up the Hudson River. So I remember watching the streets flooding, and it was coming up through the sewers. It was fucking gross, dude, like poop water. I’m not even kidding. Poop water just rising, it had rised up and we were like three or four feet flooded, dude. There’s people cruising around on little like rafts and shit.
Mike Fraser 50:17
You should have been doing a backstoke.
Brian Schoenborn 50:18
Oh, god, it was so gross.
Mike Fraser 50:23
Something you couldn’t even be protected from NBC gear by.
Brian Schoenborn 50:26
No! So I mean, you know, we survived a lot of people, you know, there wasn’t a lot of damage to our places were higher up in the apartment, but um you know a lot of people lost their stuff whole lives and things like that, you know it was terrible. But yeah, hurricanes.
Mike Fraser 50:40
Yeah. Thankfully most of my stuff was in a a very well protected storage unit in Las Vegas.
Brian Schoenborn 50:48
Oh yeah. Pretty much walked unscathed.
Mike Fraser 50:51
I had a bunch of stuff at the hotel that got completely annihilated but it was just like, well, you know, I’m that’s insurance. So, that’s what you gotta do.
Brian Schoenborn 50:58
Yeah. So what um, I want to, I want to shift back to your entrepreneurial stuff. We can talk about that for a little bit. You mentioned something was it was it the Was it the mailbox computer store that you had with the lease that there was like something going on with your house? Is that what happened?
Mike Fraser 51:18
Yeah, yeah. So I, so I saw it. So this this is actually funny because it’s been 15 years now since I’ve actually talked to my stepfather who was a part of the story I haven’t actually told on any, in any forum of any sort other than just, you know, telling people that the actual story. And it’s interesting because I was actually going through a bunch of old paperwork, and I have this folder full of all the paperwork from this particular story that I’m about to tell you.
Brian Schoenborn 51:51
Yeah.
Mike Fraser 51:53
So I had my first store mailbox mailbox or computer repair shop and I was 19. And I had another business partner who was in his in his 20s but we both didn’t have credit, so we needed credit. So I talked to my stepfather said, “Hey, I want to open up the store, I want to be able to, you know, make a go at this.” And so he agreed to sign on the lease so he’d become an actual owner of the business. But then at front of me, Catherine, and it was all I was from all the work that I did from all the computers that I built from people and just generally speaking, saving money and getting a loan against my car. I opened up the store, so I so I did that.
And many, many or a few…I shouldn’t say many months later…a few months later, after the holiday season. He asked us for, he wanted us to start paying him money out of the business because he signed-on. We’re like, “Look, we’re just we just started this thing out. We’re trying to make this work. Nobody’s taking money out of this. We just need to make this a successful venture. We just came out of being able to, you know, pay to put up the sign and pay for various things that we need with the business.” So we did that. So we said, “No, we can’t we can’t do that.”
Brian Schoenborn 53:02
So so so he’s just like, I don’t know where he’s like, “Pay me,”?.
Mike Fraser 53:05
Yeah, pretty much.
Brian Schoenborn 53:06
So I mean, but what was his function? Like, he just literally just scribble on at lease.
Mike Fraser 53:10
Yeah, signed the lease.
Brian Schoenborn 53:13
Awesome.
Mike Fraser 53:14
Nothing. Nothing. So so I’m just like…
Brian Schoenborn 53:18
He’s like a slumlord. To his own stepkid. Jesus.
Mike Fraser 53:20
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. More stories about that but yeah, we’ll focus on this one. So yeah and, mind you, this is the same individual who, in order to leave to go into the Air Force, had me signed a promissory note for him for my bonus so that I could get transcripts because I was homeschooled.
Brian Schoenborn 53:42
Okay, wait. So he paid you, or you, he made you pay him?
Mike Fraser 53:48
He made me sign I never ended up actually paying him because his whole way of this whole falling out but yeah, he me said sign a promissory note. Yeah.
Brian Schoenborn 53:54
What? Dude. This guy, man.
Mike Fraser 53:57
That’s some shady, shady shit. I’ll tell you.
Brian Schoenborn 54:01
That’s a way to treat you. And what it’s worth, he wasn’t blood.
Mike Fraser 54:04
No, no, of course, obviously.
Brian Schoenborn 54:06
Clearly. Jesus Christ.
Mike Fraser 54:08
But in
Comentarios